Dr. Who and the Daleks

And now for something completely different.

Me: Right, it's time to watch the 1965 Peter Cushing film.
Hannah: Is it canon?
Me: Not even close.
Hannah: Then no.
Me: It's worth watching just to see how non-canon it is. For a start it's a remake of The Daleks, the first Dalek story.
Hannah: So it's about them finding the Daleks for the first time ever, again.
Me: Yes. There's also a lot of other reasons why it's not canon, but don't worry about that yet; it'll become clear as we go along.
Hannah: I assume it has different companions as well.

Two of the film's main selling points are immediately obvious.

Me: Look, it's in colour and widescreen!
Hannah: Oh. I don't want it.
Me: You don't want it in colour?
Hannah: No. I'm sure I watched it in black and white before! I remember watching a black and white film with Daleks in. I'm sure I didn't watch a TV episode.

The opening credits are accompanied by a background of psychedelic colour and a soundtrack that sounds like it was lifted straight out of a 1960s James Bond score.

Hannah: This is really weird, it feels like the beginning of The Pink Panther.
Me: You say that like it's a bad thing.
Hannah: Does The Pink Panther start like this? I can't remember.
Me: Not quite like this, but I can see what you mean. It was made in 1963 so they're only a couple of years apart.

Then she notices the character names in the credits.

Hannah: Oh, it does have the same companions! That's just weird.
Me: Er, sort of.
Hannah: It feels wrong. It feels completely different.
Me: We haven't even gotten through the credits yet!
Hannah: We've gone from black and white to having all these lights like a nightclub disco. Awful.

The opening scene is met with a look of unconcealed disgust from Hannah, even before any of the characters has spoken. We open with the Doctor, Barbara and Susan sitting in their living room; shortly afterwards the doorbell rings and Barbara introduces the others to her new boyfriend, Ian.

Hannah: I feel sick.

We're 57 seconds into the film, and already Hannah is so confused that we need to pause and recap.

Me: Any questions?
Hannah: So Barbara is the granddaughter...
Me: Barbara and Susan are both his granddaughters.
Hannah: And Barbara and Ian are a couple. And everyone is sitting together in a living room, in a house, and reading science books.
Me: Do you want everything explained before we continue, or should we just carry on?
Hannah: No, let's just watch it. And I'll just sit here hating it.
Me: Try and enjoy it for what it is, rather than thinking of it as Doctor Who. Imagine it's a standalone sci-fi film and judge it on its own merits.

It's at this point that we meet Ian Chesterton version 2.0 (played by Roy Castle) as he falls through the front door.

Hannah: Oh. Comedy.

When Ian addresses the protagonist as "Dr Who", Hannah is convinced she's missed something and rewinds the film to double-check. Much to her chagrin, she realises she understood it correctly the first time.

Hannah: Oh, okay, so that's just normal. So his surname is "Who" and he's Dr Who and it's perfectly normal for people to say "Dr Who."
Me: Okay, maybe it's time to explain this. He's a human scientist whose name is Dr Who. He's not an alien, he's just an eccentric old scientist who builds a time machine.
Hannah: Yeah. It's shit.
Me: Do you not think that makes it more relatable in a way?
Hannah: No.

Dr Who shows Ian the time machine he invented; Hannah is even more disgruntled when she realises that the ship is simply named Tardis (with no definite article), but she's relieved to see something familiar she can grab onto.

Hannah: This is more like it.

Then she sees the interior.

Hannah: I take it back.

It's a complete mess of machinery and cables, without even so much as a central console.

Hannah: Why are they showing their time machine to a random stranger just because he's Barbara's boyfriend?

While the TV series is aimed at a wider audience, this film is aimed squarely at children, and it definitely shows.

Hannah: It feels very Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory.
Me: The tone is a bit different from the original story. You may find there's a bit more slapstick comedy and fewer moral debates about the merits of pacifism.
Hannah: I hate it. I hate slapstick like this.
Me: I think it's less intrusive later on.

In the interests of balance, I'm trying to accentuate the positive. There isn't a lot here to recommend over the original version, but the production values are a good place to start.

Me: Come on, this petrified forest is more impressive than it was on TV, isn't it?
Hannah: I was about to say the sets don't look any better with all the extra money they've been given. They just look bigger.
Me: Oh, I don't know. I think they look pretty good.
Hannah: I can see the edge of the set!
Me: That's the edge of the forest, surely?

She was never a huge fan of the original Susan, but she's finding this one extremely annoying and precocious.

Hannah: She's like one of those shitty children from Willy Wonka who gets their comeuppance in the end because she runs around breaking everything.
Me: Incidentally, you do realise their names are probably Susan Who and Barbara Who, right?
Hannah: (gravely) I know.

Even worse, Susan's name is used in a diminutive form throughout the film, and at one point I catch Hannah muttering "Susie" contemptuously under her breath.

Me: There was almost a film made before this; apparently Disney were interested in adapting Marco Polo.
Hannah: I doubt it.
Me: Well, they made enquiries anyway. It didn't get any further than that.
Hannah: Why would they want to make Marco Polo?
Me: They used to make a lot of live-action films in the UK back then.

As before, the travellers come across a petrified animal in the forest, and Hannah sympathises with the production team when Ian breaks a piece off.

Hannah: Oh yeah, the stuffed dog. I bet the prop makers spent ages making these.
Me: They were made to be broken. Like pie crusts or promises.
Hannah: I don't like how pathetic they're making Ian look.
Me: On the plus side, they've taken seven 25-minute episodes and turned them into one 80-minute film, so the pacing is going to be a lot tighter. You don't get a whole episode of people wandering around in caves.
Hannah: I think that police box is bigger than usual.
Me: It's chunkier, certainly. Nice shade of blue. What do you think of this Doctor?
Hannah: Not bad. He's a bit too polite.
Me: You wish he was more like Hartnell?
Hannah: Well, he's trying to be quite a lot like him as well as still being different.
Me: Hartnell is all they had to work from at this point. As far as everyone is concerned, William Hartnell is the Doctor and that's all he's ever been like. Nobody else had ever played him before.

Hannah manages to keep her enthusiasm in check as she watches this strange version of a familiar story. After getting over the initial shock of the film's general wrongness - and the sight of Daleks in bright primary colours - she watches the rest in a somewhat grudging silence, noting the occasional deviation (such as the Daleks' inexplicable tendency to furnish their control room with lava lamps).

Hannah: It's weird. It's a story I've already seen, so it's not interesting. But at the same time it is, because they're doing it differently and they're doing it with a budget that's quite a bit bigger.
Me: It's good seeing Ian and Barbara again, isn't it?
Hannah: They're not Ian and Barbara.

You may recall how thoroughly unimpressed she was with the "circular mutation" exposition in the original story, and she's pleased that the explanation here is at least slightly better. Unfortunately the "children's film" vibe isn't doing a lot for her; this version is noticeably tamer than the original (most notably Antodus surviving his death scene in the caves), and although she's getting used to Roy Castle now that the slapstick comedy is less prominent, she's still finding the humour more than a little grating. When Ian stops the bomb countdown during the film's climax, complete with cheesy one-liner, it's a sign of Hannah's complete lack of engagement that she wearily responds to the quip with "What an irrelevant thing to say."

As everyone departs in Tardis, Hannah is interested that Dr Who seems to know where he's going, unlike his TV counterpart.

Hannah: This Doctor knows how to aim. Or does he?

She gets her answer a few seconds later when they end up on an ancient battlefield in the path of an advancing Roman army. (It's not a tease for a remake of The Romans, unfortunately.)

Hannah: That's shite.

The Score

Me: So what did you think?
Hannah: As a film by itself, it's funny if you like that kind of thing and it's a good, interesting story. But as a Doctor Who thing, it was shit.
Me: I quite like the idea of a group of humans ending up there by accident.
Hannah: Yes, it's a completely different story! Also, it just ends. They shot up the computer and then they went home, and that was it. The pacing is so much faster than the TV version and it feels rushed. It definitely doesn't dawdle or waste too much too much time, but they cut out all the ethical debates and it lacks emotion because it's just too quick. There's not enough fear.
Me: So if you had to score it, just for fun?
Hannah: I don't really know if I can rate it because it's not a Doctor Who episode. It shouldn't have a rating.
Me: Okay, so ignore Doctor Who as a franchise. Just rate it as a film on its own merits, Empire-style.
Hannah: Well, it doesn't have enough detail and the characters were a bit shallow. And I don't like slapstick. But it was a good story, because the original was a good story so you can't get that wrong.

5/10

I can tell she's still slightly embittered about the whole experience, so a little charm probably wouldn't go amiss.

Me: Thank you for watching it with me.
Hannah: You're not welcome. There was no need to watch it. It's not an episode.
Me: It's part of Doctor Who, and the idea is that we watch all of Doctor Who.
Hannah: It's just not what I was expecting to be watching. I don't know why, but in my head I always remembered watching a film with Daleks in London. I have no idea what I watched, but it clearly wasn't this.

It sounds like she remembers watching the sequel, but I decide to wait a few days before telling her there's another one of these and that we're going to be watching it eventually. I can't see it going down too well at the moment.